Masters' New Breed: High-tech, But No Lower Scores

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Sandy Lyle, who won The Masters golf tournament in 1988, is a product of his times.

He began playing at age 6 when he father put a golf club in his hands, and he honed his skills using teaching aids unavailable to golfers of an earlier era.

Lyle's first set of clubs had flexible shafts that became more flexible as time went on. He used videotape to examine his form, and he used computers to analyze each shot.

Last year Lyle, who benefitted from the high-tech advances in golf, won The Masters with a 72-hole total of 281. The year before, Larry Mize won The Masters with a 285.

How did the scores compare with those shot by winners of an earlier era?

In 1934, Horton Smith used the standard stiff wooden shaft clubs and won the first Masters with a 284, three strokes higher than Lyle and one stroke better than Mize. In 1935, Gene Sarazen won with a 282.

The Masters record of 271 is shared by Ray Floyd (1976) and Jack Nicklaus (1965).

Keep this in mind when you think about sending away for those expensive high-tech doohickeys that guarantee to take strokes off your game.

MARK CALCAVECCHIA, who finished a stroke behind Lyle last year, listed his five favorites in this week's tournament as:

"I've got a feeling, though, that somebody that nobody expects to do anything, somebody like Bob Gilder, pops up and does something," he said.

CALCAVECCHIA SAID said he prepared for The Masters by getting away from golf for a week.

"After The Players Championship two weeks ago, I went to the Bahamas for four days and just kind of laid low," he said. "I grubbed out and even grew a beard.

"I started practicing last Wednesday and hit so many balls that I broke a callous on my hand and had to sit out two more days."

SOME OF THE veterans of The Masters believe young golfers who bring their own caddies to Augusta National are making a big mistake.

"Golfers playing in the Masters for the first time might be better off using an Augusta National caddy," said Tom Watson. "These guys know the course like they know the back of their hands."

"They walk up to a shot, eyeball it, and say `it's 155 yards'," said Fuzzy Zoeller of Fords Colony in Williamsburg, who won The Masters in 1979. "They don't have that yardage book or have to look at the sprinklers for the yardage."

Zoeller credited local caddy Jerry Beard for helping him win in 1979.

"Jerry led me around like a blind man with a dog," said Zoeller. "He knew every yardage.

"I was just fortunate I was playing well at the time and was able to hit it where he told me to. I'm still trying to hit it in those same damn areas, but the ball doesn't want to cooperate.